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LETTER TO THE GOVERNOR. 



Washington, D. C, August llth, 1871. 

His Excellency H. D. Cooke, Governor, and 

President of the Board of Public Works : 
Sir : As you and the other members of the Board* of Public Works 
have, by a solemnly sworn statement, in a grave legal proceeding, given 
currency to a falsehood concerning me, and as the Board and its servants 
have been busy in maligning and traducing me, and as the misrule and 
venality of your administration have made this matter very nearly to 
concern the interests of this community and of the Republican party of 
the District of Columbia, I regard it my privilege to address you this 
communication through the public press. 

MY REPUBLICANISM AND THAT OF THE BOARD. 

From 'the earliest organization of the Republican party I have been a 
laborer in its ranks, and I have never faltered in my devotion to the 
principles that have given life, vigor, progress, and success to that party. 

On the outbreak of the rebellion I became a soldier in the army of 
the Union, and served therein until the close of the war gave again 
supremacy to the laws of the land. During that time I was familiar 
with the dangers of the field and the toils and privations of camp and 
march. I have laid more bridges in the face of the enemy than even 
your colleague, Colonel Magruder, boasts of having done. I have en- 
dured confinement in eleven rebel prisons — twice under the fire of our 
own batteries — three times escaped, twice recaptured, once standing be- 
fore a gallows erected by rebels for my execution ; at last, after fifty -four 
days and nights of toilsome journeying, finding shelter and rest in the 
loyally-hospitable dwelling of Senator Brownlow, at Knoxville. 

At the close of the war I settled in Washington to pursue my business 
as an architect, and if East Capitol street and A street southwest be 
permitted to testify, it will appear that I have been able to do something 
for the improvement of Washington. During the time that I have lived 
here, if I have not done my full share of the labor and expense of main- 
taining the supremacy of the Republican party, then no man has. 



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Thus much for myself. How is it with you and your colleagues on 
the Board? With your record hitherto I have no fault to find. You 
were early in the party, and have done good service. During the terri- 
ble struggle that followed the first national triumph of our party, you 
and those associated with you in your banking business rendered good 
service in sustaining the credit of the nation, and you were munificently 
rewarded with abundant piles of Treasury notes. But now, holding the 
first office in the District of Columbia, you permit men to hold official 
stations at your will unrebuked to manifest toward the Republicans who 
gave you the legislative support that you now enjoy, the same spirit that 
animated Saul when he journeyed from Jerusalem down to Damascus, 
and you have drawn around you men now sitting squat like toads at your 
ear, who feel precisely the same interest in the prosperity of the Repub- 
lican party as did Lucifer in the glory of the kingdom of Heaven. 

To two of youB colleagyes on the Board, Mr. A. R. Shepherd and Mr. 

A. B. MuUett, I will propound some questions, to the answers to which 

the Republicans of this District and the President of the United States 

(if he cares to know who are his friends) will do well to give attention. 

The questions are these : 

Were not both of you in the lobby of the Democratic Convention in 
New York in 1868, promising to the leaders of that party aid and sup- 
port to defeat General Grant, then the nominated candidate of the Re- 
publican party? 

Did not you, Mr. Mullet, with your characteristic profanity, curse Gen- 
eral Grant until the air turned sulphurous blue around you? 

Did you not, during the last Presidential campaign, appoint Democratic 
superintendents over all the extensive Treasury work under your direc- 
tion, here and in other parts of the country? and did you not have some of 
them in Western States elected delegates to the Democratic National Con- 
vention, and were not the expenses of their journey to Washington, on 
their way to attend that convention, paid by your direction out of the 
Treasury of the United States? 

Did not you, sir, when an enrolment was in progress, at the very dark- 
est moment of our country's history, seek the protection of the British 
flag, and did you not secure exemption upon your claim of being a 
British subject? 

Were not you, Mr. Shepherd, during the progress of the trial of ^A.n- 
drew Johnson, one of the loudest and most virulent amongst those who 
were denouncing Mr. Stanton and General Grant, and Congress and the 
Republican party? Have you not been laboring for years to deprive the 
people of this District of all voice in the election of their own local of- 
ficers? And was it not at the dictation of yourself, the Governor, and 
Colonel Magruder, that there was stricken from the House of Delegates 
bill, "creatine^ certain offices in and for the District of Columbia," the 



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}3rovisiou granting to this people the poor privilege of electing five out of 
nearly two hundred officers, thus making, by selfish considerations that 
are well understood, the majority of the House of Delegates false to their 
party, and false to the people who elected them? Will these gentlemen 
answer, and answer truly? or will they compel me to answer, by giving 
to the public facts and evidences now in my possession? 

When Benedict Arnold went into the camp of the enemy he came not 
back any more. Not so some of these men^ They fail in their effort to 
defeat -General Grant and the Republican party, and then — allured by 
the savor of the flesh-pots — they come sneaking back into the Republi- 
can camp, and, by some sort of incomprehensible hocus-pocns, procure 
the very President, whom they- had striven to defeat, to, set them up here • 
to dictate and rule over the Republicans of this District. 'Tis strange! 
'tis passing strange. I wish he had not done it. I am neither afraid nor 
ashamed to compare my record with that of any of these men. 

IS IT PERJURY? 

In your answer, in the Supreme Court of the District, to the applica- 
tion for injunction, occurs the following sentence, viz: "I admit that 
.they (the complainants) are property-owners and tax-payers, except Al- 
bert Grant, who, I am informed, has paid no tax in the District." The 
same statement is contained in the separate answer of the other members 
of the Board. You all swear that you believe this information to be true. 
The land records of this District show that some years since I purchased 
square No. 760, in the City of Washington, bounded by East Capitol and 
south A streets, and Second and Third streets east. On the A street front 
of that square, extending from Second to Third street, stands a block of 
sixteen dwellings, erected by me, that have been finished for more than 
a year. On the Capitol street front of the same square stands a block of 
fourteen dwellings, likewise extending from Second to Third street, now 
being finished by me, and known as Grant's Capitol Block, engravings 
of which may be seen in many public places in this city. 

Some controversy, both in the City Councils and out of them, over the 
drainage of that property, and over the paving of A street, had attracted 
attention until it had become notorious in this community, that I owned 
and was improving that property. In addition to this notoriety, you, 
sir, had learned, positively learned, in the prosecution of your business 
as a money lender, that I had owned that square for years. Every mem- 
ber of the Board of Public Works certainly knew that I owned and 
was improving that square. Did you, sir, believe that I had owned that 
square for years without paying any taxes upon it? Yet so you and all 
your colleagues swear you did believe. 

I have paid taxes on that property amounting to three thousand four 
hundred and thirty-three dollars and ninety-eight cents, ($3,433.98,) and 



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the unpaid taxes for 1870 amount to five hundred and ninety-six dollars 
and seventy cents ($596,70). There is a water tax, paving tax, and 
sewer tax, on the same property, to become due in instalments, amount- 
ing to two thousand one hundred and eighty-one dollars and eighteen 
cents ($2,181.18). I have paid taxes on lots 1, 5, and 7, Queen's sub- 
division of Haddock's Hill, County of Washington, amounting to seven- 
ty-nine dollars and fifty cents ($79.50). 

Making a total of taxes paid $3,518 48 

Of taxes assessed and to be paid 2,777 88 

In all r S6,296 36 

The land records of this District show that I am the owner of, and 
taxable for, the following property, of the values annexed, viz: 

In square 760, lots 16, 17, 18, and 25 $36,000 

" " 1,8, and 14 75,000 

" '' 2, 3. 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 200,000 

765, part of lot 5 1,000 

727, " 30 3,000 

" 512, " 23 4,000 

Lots 1, 5, and 7, Queen's subdivision of Haddock's Hill 2,000 

Total value $321,000 

There was no occasion, legal or otherwise, for the introduction of that 
falsehood into your answer to the application for injunction, for it was a 
question not at all material to any issue in the case, whether Albert Grant, 
one of seventeen complainants, was or was not a proper party to the ac- 
tion, and it was not even alleged to be so 'by your attorneys. I am una- 
ble to discover any motive for the introduction of this falsehood into your 
answer except innate, unmixed " cussedness." You and your attorneys 
must, indeed, have been hard pressed for arguments when you descended 
to such things. I am willing that this people should judge between you 
and your colleagues, who have thus gone out of your way to drag this 
falsehood by solemn affidavit into a legal proceeding, and myself, whom 
you have maliciously sought to injure. 



YOUR PLAN — WHAT IS IT 



The Board transmitted to the Legislature a communication, accom- 
panied with a statement of improvements recommended by you and your 
colleagues, which, according to your estimates, were to cost $6,578,397 — 
two-thirds of which you proposed to have at once put into your hands for 
safe-keeping until you chose to expend it in your own way, and the other 
third you proposed to assess upon property which you might decide was 
to be benefited by your improvements, and collect the assessment your- 
selves, and expend it like the other, just as might please your fancy. In 



that "grand system of improvements" (as you are pleased to call it) is 
the Tiber sewer. You propose, beginning at Pennsylvania avenue, to 
build a sewer of similar dimensions (similar to what does not exactly ap- 
pear) along the valley of Tiber Creek to the boundary at Gales', with a 
branch to old St. Patrick's Burying Ground. Now, one of the results 
of building this sewer will be to reclaim from the bed of the Tiber more 
than one and a half millions feet of ground that will be the property of 
l^rivate citizens, and will be worth more than two millions of dollars, and 
the people at large will be taxed for two-thirds of six hundred and sixty 
thousand dollars (according to your estimate) to build this sewer for 
those whose property is not not only to be increased in value, as the usual 
effect of such improvements, but is to be increased by an area worth more 
than two millions of dollars. You could not wait until some more just 
mode of paying for this improvement might be permitted by law ; but 
this item, with its connections, must go in to swell the grand aggregate 
that you fondly hoped would soon be in the possession of the Board. 

Now, please to take your grand system and come with me to the map 
of the city. Mark the course of this sewer and count the squares through 
which it passes. You find them to be twenty, and the length of the 
sewer is set down in your grand system as eleven thousand feet — prob- 
ably not very far from correct. Now, beginning at Pennsylvania ave- 
nue, count the squares through which this sewer passes until you have 
counted four. Here you find yourself at the intersection of E and North 
Capitol streets. Now count the squares from this point along North 
Capitol street to Boundary. They are eleven. Turn to your grand 
system, and there you find a^sewer along these eleven squares likewise 
set down as having a length of eleven thousand feet. You will agree 
with me that this is just as probably not correct. The grand system that 
you sent to the Legislature is besprinkled all over with just such blunders 
(if they are blunders, and not intentional) as this. This manifests one 
of two things — an inexcusable ignorance and incompetency, or a wilful 
purpose to deceive and defraud somebody. 

Again : This sewer is to have a branch up what you are pleased to 
call the northeastern valley, almost .to Mr. Shepherd's farm, at an ex- 
pense of twelve dollars per lineal foot, with connections in nearly every 
direction, certainly in every direction where lies a foot of ground owned 
by any member of the Board or of the Ring that surrounds it. 

Would you know who that Ring are? Go to the land records of the 
District and procure the names of speculators who have purchased real 
estate just beyond Boundary street, and on or near AYater street; add 
the names of all persons not already on the list, who belong to the Seneca 
Stone Company, and the Metropolitan Paving Company ; add also a few 
members of the House of Delegates, and you have nearly all of the spec- 
ulating gang by whom you are surrounded, who give directions to and 



control your administration. Would you see them? They salute you 
whenever you enter your club-house on E street, west of Ninth, at even- 
ing. There some portion of them may be seen any evening contemplat- 
ing your grand system with intense satisfaction, and devising further 
means to deceive and defraud this people. 

You have by this sewer and its connections provided liberally for the 
drainage of the Tiber valley, at an expense of about one-and-a-quarter 
millions ; but even this does not seem to satisfy your friends who devised 
the grand system. Turn to your map. From the point where the west 
branch of the Tiber sewer reaches Boundary street it is but a little dis- 
tance along that street to a point where another branch of the Tiber 
crosses the boundary at Eighth street. According to your grand system, 
here in the be'd of one of the branches of the Tiber is to begin one of 
your main sewers. If you follow its course seven squares you will find 
yourself on the crest of the ridge that divides the water-shed of the Ti- 
ber from that of Rock Cree,k, just four squares from the point of great- 
est altitude of the grades of the city; and through tliis ridge, after ex- 
pending a million and a quarter to drain the Tiber valley in another di- 
rection, you propose to drain a portion of that valley into Rock Creek, 
at an expense of two hundred and ninety-eight thousand dollars. If you 
follow the course of this sewer, (and it will remind you of the tortuous way 
of a sick snake,) you will find at last that it reaches Rock Creek by a course 
that is a little west of north at a point where the course of that stream is 
just about as much east of south, and you will be in doubt whether the 
sewer is to empty into the creek or the creek into the sewer. Now, will 
you please to take your map and your grand system and return with me to 
the head of this sewer. Traveling along Boundary street w^estwardly, we 
pass on the right, eligible suburban lots and beautiful villas (property of 
the Ring) over the course of the sewer on Boundary street, to be constructed 
for the benefit of these lots and villas in the country, until we come to 
Fourteenth street, where we find ourselves on the highest ground in the 
city. Eligible point this; let us take an observation. Look to the 
north, northeast, and west. Nearly all those broad acres, those rising 
villages, those stately trees, are the property of the Ring. Yonder to 
the west of you lies the ground that the Board intend (when they shall have 
made it sufficiently valuable) to sell to the United States for a grand 
park. Now look to the south, and you see before you a sparsely-settled, 
unimproved portion of the city, entirely unsuited to lie between the most 
valuable possessions of the Ring and the business portion of the city. 
Turn to your system, and from this point the stately grandeur of its 
selfishness appears. 

Eighth street. Ninth street. Tenth street. Eleventh street. Twelfth street. 
Thirteenth street. Fourteenth street. Fifteenth street, Sixteenth street, 
Seventeenth street. Eighteenth street. Nineteenth street, Twentieth street, 
Twenty-first street, and Twenty-second street, from Boundary southward, 
and W street, V street, U street, and T street, S street, R street, Q street, 
P street, O street, and N street, from Boundary to Boundary, or from 
Seventh street west to Boundary, and Boundary itself, from Ninth to 



Twenty-second street, all to be sewered and otherwise improved at an 
expense of about one and half millions, although on some of them not a 
house or a shanty appears for considerable distances to mark the course 
of the street. You will probably agree with me that these fViets need no 
explanation. They explain themselves and their relations to the grand 
system. 

You wnll probably now be willing to turn your attention with me to 
the riverside, for you have possessions there, and so have some of your 
colleagues. At this point your grand system begins to exhibit the mod- 
esty of the Board. Tired of enumerating improvements, to be made at 
public expense, for your especial benefit, here around water-lots and slid- 
ing sea-walls, (a late invention of your engineers,) you chu(di in at once 
three hundred thousand dollars for improvements and repairs in the 
Eleventh and Eighteenth Districts. I fail to find in your grand system 
one single cent thus set down as for improvements and repairs in any one 
of the other twenty legislative districts. But here, where our possessions 
lie ! Ah ! Governor ! the allurements of the world and the deceitfulness 
of riches! Good Lord, deliver us! 

You have not forgotten the lands of the Ring on the Eastern Branch, 
but have taken good care to provide for all the streets that touch the 
Boundary at that point, while you appear to be entirely ignorant of the 
fact that one and a half miles to the westward of that point stands a 
building that some persons recognize as the Capitol of the United States. 
Your grand system avoids the more busy and better settled portions of 
the city, and with charming modesty seeks its outer portions — Boundary 
being its favorite street. 

In your system, sewers, pavements, footways, and all the parts of it, 
tend to the same object — the enhancement of the value of the property 
owned bythe Board and the Ring of satellites that revolves around it. 

That part of the city around the Capitol seems to have been forgotten, 
and that part of the city bordering on Pennsylvania avenue, between the 
Capitol and the Treasury, is scarcely referred to ; but all those parts of 
the city that are near the property of the Ring, or that lie between their 
property and the busy parts of the city, have been amply provided for, 
in order that the approaches to your property and that of your friends 
may be perfected ; and if you are permitted to carry out your grand 
system, you will be the five richest men in the District of Columbia. 
Y'our system is not a system for the improvement of the District. In- 
deed, there is little system for any purpose about it except for that which 
I have already charged, and for a wanton expenditure of public money, 
with no advantage to accrue to anybody but yourselves and the contract- 
ors. It' is characterized throughout by ignorance and deceit. It is filled 
with errors of measurement and errors of estimate, both of which are 
characteristic of the two men whose names are appended to it. 

If you will make these improvements according to your plan, I now 
make to you this proposition : I will enter into contract, and give bond 
in the sum of three millions of dollars, with security to be approved by 
you, to make all the improvements named in your system for the sum of 
four-and-a-half millions of dollars, two-thirds of which, or three millions, 
to be paid in bonds of the District of Columbia atjmr, and the remain- 
ing one-third to be assessed according to law on the property benefited 
by* the improvements, and collected by me : and I will agree to pay two 
dollars per day for all labor employed. If you give me this contract, 



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„ ..AW «nvp the taxDfivers of the District two million and seventy-eight 
you will save tne iaxpci^^i» ui u"^ ^ ^^ rlnllnrc! npoordino' 

thousand three hundred and nmety-seven (2,078,o9,, dollars acooruin 
to your own estimate, and to the laborers employed fifty cents on each 

'^^onTsttem'^touJlT disregards the vvater-sheds of the city of Wash- 
inln aSl shed^by law^ Is this because no member oi. the Board 
JpubBc AVo ks is a resident of this city? Are your engineers iguo- 

of laieCms to bring ua back to the point in our nnprovements whe.e 



we now are ? 



?crcome to no other conclusion than that your grand system is con- 
• ^ ,,.;fi^ „ ripliberate design to deceive and defraud this people. 
•^"YourSp'osi in when stepped of its ornaments, its cl^Ptrap and aU 
nfLde teste deceive, is simply a proposition for this people to put 
rntovou; hands sf^ mil ions fi^^ hundred and seventy-eight thousand 
th'eeCndred and ninety-seven (6,578,397) dollars, to be expended just 

^ty1^unrXLd''gSrsystem;yo^ 

pofeVcKpend more than four millions of the amount asked for almost 

=nlplv for the benefit of the Board and Its friends. 

FoVmon hs you have fed this people on promises to secure better en- 
sine" irskiliryou have appeared before the courts of the ^.strict w U 
f s«;ruftatement of the names of eminent engineers of «hose services 
vou s ^"re vou intended to avail yourselves. And yet you stick to your 
Hem (wWch those engineers cannot approve) with a pertinacity worthy 

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pie Sd with suspicion; that neither courts nor people are willmg to 

""fshaU'claim the privilege of addressing you again within the coming 
1 , L, T ,l,all endeavor to point out more in detail the iniquities of 
^nn^.mndsvsem when IshaU endeavor to show you that by your 
Ivstem the iCe^ burden of taxation wi» fall upon that property which 
Jof TowestClue, and, hence, less able to bear it; that your system if 
'carLK, cannot fail to result disastrously ^^^^^^^^^^ 'p-Sv rksVnd 

bring happiness and content to all classes of this people. 

^ '^"' "■' ALBERT GRANT. 






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